A Better Job
by thunderbolt-sunshine
Summary: Sirius survives the Department of Mysteries fiasco but doesn't tell the majority of the Order of the Phoenix and for the sake of his godson finds the courage to forgive himself for his past mistakes and try to create a better future. Dumbledore and Voldemort had better watch out. Padfoot is back in the game and determined to set things right.
1. Chapter 1

The moment that his psycho bitch cousin raised her wand Sirius Black knew that he was going to die and he was okay with that. Sirius' life had not been an easy one, especially the last 15 years, and he was more than ready for it to be over.

He didn't even try to get out of the way of Bellatrix's curse. His eyes widened in startled surprise, though when he realised that all she'd hit him with was a banishing curse. It would hurt like a bitch when he slammed into whatever wall was behind him but a banishing curse wasn't anywhere near his cousin's usual murderous standards. Then, though Sirius remembered where they were.

They were in the Death Chamber and Bellatrix had just banished him straight towards the Veil. 'Oh well,' he thought philosophically. At least it would be an easy death; far more merciful than he deserved, really.

It was as though everything was happening in slow motion. Sirius closed his eyes to accept his fate. Then, though a distraught scream intruded on his thoughts. "NO! SIRIUS!"

Sirius' eyes shot open again. Harry. His beloved godson. The only thing Sirius would regret leaving behind.

It was thoughts of his godson which had kept him alive in Azkaban. It was thoughts of Harry which had motivated him to summon all of his waning strength and break out of the torturous island prison. It was also for Harry's sake he'd fought to stay one step ahead of the Ministry during the two years he'd spent on the run and struggled to stay sane this past year locked up in his mother's house.

He couldn't do it anymore, though. He wasn't strong enough. Sirius hated himself for leaving his godson behind but Harry would be alright in the end. There were plenty of people, much better than him, who would look after his godson after he was gone.

Sirius would be lying if he said he hadn't suffered through countless hours of jealousy over the past decade and a half that all those people were getting to spend time with Harry while he was rotting in prison, accused of a crime he would never have even dreamed of committing. Now, though he knew that it was for the best he leave Harry to their care. He was an unstable wreck, irreparably broken by Azkaban. Remus, Albus and the Weasleys, on the other hand, were stronger and infinitely more stable. They would do a much better job of taking care of Harry than he ever could.

On the other hand what, exactly, had they done to take care of Harry in the past?

Sirius had never had the courage to sit down with his godson and get all the details about Harry's life because that would mean facing up to just how badly he'd let James and Lily down. He had heard snippets of information, though, small bits of information gleaned from Harry's letters, his godson's friends and other members of the Order of the Phoenix.

What Sirius had heard had left him outraged. Nobody deserved to be treated like that, especially not his beloved godson. Petunia was supposed to love Harry in James and Lily's stead and yet Harry had needed to threaten her with his supposedly murderous godfather in order to get basic necessities like good and clothing? On what level was that acceptable?

More to the point how had Albus missed that, especially with his squib spy Arabella Figg living just down the street? For that matter how had Albus, Molly and Arthur missed the abuse going on in Surrey when three of the Weasley kids had been forced to rescue Harry from a room with seven locks and a cat flap on the door and bars covering the windows?

And that wasn't even touching on all the shit Sirius had heard about in the years since Harry had started Hogwarts. Possessed defence teachers? Wraiths of Voldemort? Basilisks? Dementors? That fucking tournament? It wasn't a school Albus was running. It was a fucking madhouse.

Sirius was on the run from the law, a kill-on-sight order hanging over his head, and he was still sure that he could do a better job of taking care of Harry than others had been doing in his stead.

That was when Sirius Black's life changed forever. He _could _be doing a better job of taking care of Harry. He _should _be doing a better job of taking care of Harry. The only reason he hadn't already stepped in was because he feared Harry's reaction when the boy inevitably realised just how badly he'd been let down by his godfather. By rights Harry should hate him for everything that had happened but for some inexplicable reason Harry loved him. The night he'd been reunited with his godson and Harry had agreed to move in with him had been one of the best nights in Sirius' miserable life. Harry's love was all that was keeping him going right now and Sirius didn't know what he'd do if his godson rejected him now.

'But Harry hasn't rejected you,' a voice in the back of his mind reminded him. Harry knew all the facts and still loved him. And how was Sirius going to repay that love? By giving up and letting himself be murdered, leaving Harry in the care of people who had only ever done a mediocre, at best, job of caring for him. How selfish could he possibly be?

Sirius knew, in that moment, that he couldn't let Bellatrix kill him. No matter how crappy things were, for Harry's sake, he had to keep going.

Suddenly he felt a fire inside of him that hadn't burned since James was alive. Using reflexes that hadn't been necessary since the day he was an active Order member, out in the field fighting Voldemort and the deatheaters, at the last possible second Sirius spun out of the way of Bellatrix's spell, simultaneously casting a disillusionment charm on himself.

"NO! SIRIUS!" he heard his godson scream again.

Looking back into the Chamber where the battle was still raging Sirius could see Harry being held back from the Veil by Remus. He realised that he'd been so close to the Veil that when he'd spun out of the way and disillusioned himself, to any onlookers it would have appeared that he'd actually fallen through the bloody thing. Right now, Sirius realised, everyone believed he had died.

Sirius' every instinct screamed at him to go to his godson and reassure him but something held him back. Going to his godson now would just put himself back into the fray of battle and, knowing his luck, get him re-captured by the Ministry.

As hard as it was for now, at least, he had to stay put.

He stepped back into the shadows and watched as Remus physically dragged Harry away from the Veil. 'So now he gives a damn about James and Lily's son,' Sirius thought sneeringly.

The moment when he'd confronted Pettigrew two years ago aside, Sirius didn't think he'd ever been so furious as he had been when he'd discovered that Remus and Harry were not a part of each other's lives. For all those years in Azkaban Sirius had comforted himself with the thought that at least in his absence Remus would be taking care of Harry but it turned out that when James and Lily died Remus had turned his back on the baby who'd called him 'Unca Mooey' and hadn't so much as sent him a letter before or after his brief tenure as Hogwarts defence professor. The two old marauders had had a huge fight about that. Sirius wasn't about to let anyone get away with hurting his godson, even his friends.

Then again, were he and Remus even friends anymore? Sirius wondered darkly.

He and Remus were _old friends, _forever connected by a dark past but what about the present? After James and Lily died he had been consigned to Azkaban while Remus had continued with as normal a life as possible. They were totally different people now, irreversibly altered by the long years they'd spent apart and Sirius couldn't reconcile who Remus was now to the person Remus once and been.

As hard as he tried Sirius couldn't completely forgive Remus for thinking that he had been the one to betray the Potters and the only time they ever really talked these days was when Remus, unable to see that he had changed from the rash, impulsive idiot he'd been as a teenager, wanted to lecture him about his so-called immaturity. They still interacted with each other but no, they weren't really friends. There were actually times when Sirius found his former friend even more patronising that Molly Weasley. Really, the only people Sirius would call his friends these days were old Mad-Eye Moody and, surprisingly, in spite of who his mother was, Bill Weasley.

Sticking to the shadows Sirius followed along as the battle moved to the atrium and more Ministry workers arrived. It took all of his self control not to charge in when he saw Harry crossing wands with Voldemort. Where the hell was Dumbledore? How could he let a 15 year old deal with this alone? Then again Dumbledore had let Harry deal with a lot on his own over the years. The Headmaster of Hogwarts had dropped the ball on multiple occasions when it came to the health and welfare of Sirius' godson.

And that was what got the old marauder thinking. Why did Harry have to do what Dumbledore said? The man was only his headmaster, not his father or his guardian. For that matter why did any of them have to do what Dumbledore said? Yes the old man was commonly acknowledged as the only person Voldemort had ever feared but that didn't make him god and as most of his decisions had been seriously suspect of late it really made no sense that they were all continuing to follow him blindly.

Sirius' status as a wanted fugitive meant that he'd been extremely isolated these past few years. For safety's sake aside from Harry Order members were the only ones he'd associated with and even if they didn't like or care about him they had, at least, accepted he was innocent of the crimes that he'd been accused of. Maybe it was time to seek out some new allies.

It would have to be used extremely carefully but even as a fugitive his status as the last surviving male Black meant he had a lot of power he could use to help Harry and against Voldemort. Even better if he could reach out to some of his old friends, the ones who weren't in the Order, and could persuade them he was innocent, he wouldn't be alone in this venture.

Sirius breathed a sigh of relief as Dumbledore _finally _arrived and stepped into the duel between Harry and Voldemort. At the same time Mad-Eye Moody looked directly at him and nodded once. Sirius remembered that with his creepy eye Mad-Eye could see through disillusionment charms so would know where he was. Sirius didn't know whether Mad-Eye somehow knew what he was planning and was pledging his support or whether the old aurour was just letting him know he knew he was alive. Either way it was kind of nice knowing he had an ally, at least in some capacity.

Sirius knew that Mad-Eye felt guilty for his involvement in his botched arrest 15 years earlier. The only ones Sirius blamed were Crouch, Bangold and, to a lesser degree, Dumbledore but maybe Mad-Eye would still help him protect Harry in the name of atonement.

And that was what it all came down to, really. Protecting Harry. Sirius knew that he had been a pretty poor godfather so far so it was long past time that he step up to his responsibilities and give Harry the kind of life James and Lily had wanted for their only child.

Sirius looked around the atrium and saw that it was now flooded with Ministry workers, all of whom had their eyes glued to the duel between Dumbledore and Voldemort. He knew that pretty soon the entire Ministry building would be locked down so an investigation could take place and that he needed to get out of here before that because no disillusionment charm was powerful enough to shield him from the scanning spells aurours always used in the initial stages of every investigation they carried out.

He took one last look at his godson, now crouched behind the ruins of the Fountain of Magical Brethren. He felt guilty for maintaining the illusion that he had died but for now that was the way it had to be.

Not for long, though. Sirius would get all his ducks in a row and then he would reveal his presence, at least to Harry.

Things were going to be very, very different from now on.


	2. Chapter 2

Knowing that he had to move quickly now Sirius hastily left the Ministry building. He exited via the DMLE entrance which was so busy none of the wards on the door even registered his presence. Old memories of when he had been a member of the DMLE began to resurface in his mind but he quickly pushed them back. Time was against him now and he couldn't afford to waste time reminiscing. Voldemort being sighted on Ministry grounds and several of the wizarding world's most 'upstanding' citizens being outed as deatheaters would take precedence with the DMLE but sooner or later someone was going to bring up his supposed death and there was a lot Sirius needed to get done before that happened.

As soon as he was clear of the Ministry's wards he apparated back to Grimmauld Place and as he hurried through the door he noted with some irony that for the first time in his life he was happy to see his childhood home. It had been a close call tonight, too close, and something like that could not be allowed to happen again. He hadn't considered the consequences of running off to the Ministry until it was too late and that mistake had almost proven fatal. For Harry's sake he couldn't keep doing shit like that. He needed to start thinking things through.

He shut and locked the door behind him and then, with a flick of his wand, started altering the wards. Dumbledore may be secret keeper for the Order of the Phoenix but Sirius was still Master of the Manor so he could go around whatever protections the old man had put on the house if he so desired. He sealed the house with some of the Black Family Magic that his Uncle Alphard had taught him. Only men of Black blood could command the family magic so the Order of the Phoenix wouldn't be able to get back in and Sirius hoped they would think, in the aftermath of his death, the house had locked itself down automatically, awaiting its new master. The story wouldn't hold for long, especially if they made an effort to find out who the new master might be, but it would hopefully buy Sirius enough time to start putting his plans into action.

He started to head upstairs only to almost trip over Kreacher's headless corpse which was lying on the hall floor. Sirius snorted disgustedly. From the little he'd been able to glean about _why _Harry had gone running off to the Department of Mysteries tonight he'd already figured out that Kreacher must have sold him out to one of his foul cousins and guessed that the Black Family Magic had punished the elf for betraying his master. Feeling absolutely no regret or remorse Sirius vanished the corpse with another flick of his wand. The horrible house elf had gone out of his way to make Sirius' life hell ever since Orion and Walburga Black had obtained him when their eldest son was five years old so there was no way that Sirius was going to honour the elf with a burial, especially not after the fiasco that had happened tonight.

He finally made it upstairs and slipped into the Master's study. Contrary to what Remus and Molly seemed to have gotten some sort of sadistic pleasure from telling everyone he hadn't actually spent the majority of the long hours of his imprisonment in Grimmauld Place shut away with Buckbeak or locked in his room guzzling firewhiskey. He actually spent most of his time in here. Nobody seemed to understand that after so long in Azkaban he wasn't a social creature anymore. He was used to, and had grown to appreciate, solitude and stuck in the house, unable to go outside, the time he spent shut away in the study was the only privacy he ever got.

It wasn't like he lacked things to do. He'd spent countless hours this past year combing through the massive Black Library, in a hidden room off the study, looking for ways to dispose of Voldemort. Most of the books in here were less than reputable so he'd had hope that he would find some sort of option that Dumbledore hadn't considered. Unfortunately he hadn't had any luck, not that he'd got anywhere near all the way through the library. He probably should have recruited some help but he was reticent to invite anyone else into his private domain and there was almost no one in the Order who he trusted enough to grant access to this wealth of knowledge anyway. He'd also had the feeling that if he revealed the existence of the library the kids would have found out about it and Hermione Granger would have begged for access. Sirius owed Hermione a lot for helping Harry to save his life two years earlier so would have had a hard time denying her anything she asked for but as much as he felt the kids deserved more information than Dumbledore and Molly were giving them he didn't think even the supremely intelligent Hermione Granger would be able to cope with some of the literature in here. The best idea, he'd decided, was definitely to keep the library a strict secret.

Sirius sat down at his desk and wrote out a letter to his Gringotts bank manager, begging for a face to face meeting as soon as possible, and sanctuary while he was inside the bank. He needed to work something out with the goblins as soon as possible. They had been helping him since he'd escaped Azkaban, letting him access his vault from time to time, but now he needed to ask something more of them. Eventually someone, probably Dumbledore, was going to try and have his will read. If the will he'd written out in his twenties was still valid then Harry was his major beneficiary but Sirius couldn't afford to have his estate redistributed. He would require a lot of money to put his plans in motion and hoped that he could get the goblins to agree to some sort of subterfuge that would pull the wool over the eyes of both the Order and the Ministry.

He sent the letter off with his owl, Rusty. He'd had Bill buy the bird for him earlier in the year so he'd have a reliable way to communicate with Harry but thanks to Delores fucking Umbridge contact with his godson had been all but non-existent since Christmas so Rusty had been sadly lacking things to do. The owl took his letter and swooped off out the open window, presumably wanting to get away quickly in case he changed his mind. Sirius then went back to his desk and wrote letters to Mad-Eye and Bill. They were the only two he was prepared to trust with news of his survival right now and, presuming the goblins granted him the meeting he desired, Sirius would also need to meet with the other two at Gringotts tomorrow.

He then set the letters aside to be sent off when Rusty returned. It was at times like this he really regretted not being able to produce a patronus anymore. He was working on it but after so many years being exposed to the dementors chances were he would never be able to produce one again. It was extremely frustrating because sending messages via patronus was basically the fastest, most reliable method of communication in the entire magical world. Sirius was going to have to think up something else if he didn't master the patronus charm again soon.

He pulled out some parchment and a quill to start making a to-do list.

_Organise meeting with goblins to take care of finances (enquiry pending) _

_Find solicitor? Look into ways of securing freedom and formally getting custody of Harry_

_Obtain reliable house elf to clean up Grimmauld Place _

_Decide who, among old friends, is trustworthy and track them down (Mad-Eye can help) _

_Kidnap Harry from Petunia _

_Organise professional healer for Harry and myself (necessary evil) _

_Educate Harry about social status in wizarding world _

_Improve Harry's education _

_Research Voldemort's background and weakness _

_Research reliable communication options for allies _

Sirius cringed when he looked at the list. It was only 10 items but all of them were easier said than done, especially as he was a wanted fugitive. Unfortunately there was also one more thing to do, something that he'd left off his list. He sat back in his desk chair telling himself that it was the right thing to do even though all he wanted was to run in the other direction screaming.

Really, he should have done this when Uncle Alphard died and he became Head of the House of Black but after rebelling against pureblood dogma all his life and listening to his uncle complain about life as a noble in the political arena he'd put it off and off until finally he'd been locked away in Azkaban and claiming his inheritance wasn't an option any more. Sirius honestly couldn't figure out whether his uncle had done him a favour or not by putting him off politics. If he'd been Lord Black at the time of his arrest he surely would have had a higher chance of getting a trial but by the same token he may not have even been alive to need a trial because Voldemort would have come after him with even more determination so the Malfoys or the Lestranges could claim the House of Black after he was dead.

Sirius sighed, knowing that he couldn't put this off anymore. He raised his wand and recited the oath. _"I, Sirius Orion Black, heir by blood, law and magic, do hereby claim the House of Black. I promise to lead it with honour and integrity and to protect and guide all those who remain loyal members. So mote it be." _

He watched in mild fascination as the onyx signet ring he'd seen on his uncle's hand and which had been coveted by his father appeared on his own hand. Sirius sighed, still scarcely able to believe that this was happening. He'd distanced himself from the Black Family as soon as he was able, even going so far as to become a ward of House Potter. Now here he was the Head of the family of his birth. It was absurd.

Well, it wasn't actually. It was all because of Harry and Sirius would do anything for his godson. He just hoped that it would be enough. The newest Lord Black peered out the window in the direction that his owl had flown. Everything hinged on getting that meeting with the goblins.

Sirius needed them to grant his request or none of his plans would come to fruition and both he and Harry would be in more danger than ever before.


End file.
